"Let's not be as dogmatic as psychologists have been. We know she does. What concepts she uses is uncertain. Not verbal, nor mathematical anyway--she's been tested for that." He frowned puzzledly. "I don't know what concepts she uses in thinking. I wish I did." "Save some of the worry for our present situation," said Anti. "The object of your concern doesn't seem to need it. At least she isn't interested." Nona had wandered back to the instrument panel and was staring at the gravity drive indicator again. There was really nothing there to hold her attention but her curiosity was insatiable and childlike. And in many ways she seemed immature. And that led to an elusive thought: what child was she? Not whose child--what child. Her actual parents were known, obscure technicians and mechanics, descendants themselves of a long line of mechanics and technicians. Not one notable or distinguished person among them, her family was decently unknown to fame or misfortune in every branch--until she'd come along. And what was her place, according to heredity? Docchi didn't know but he didn't share the official medical view. With an effort Docchi stopped thinking about Nona. "We appealed to the medicouncilor," he said. "We asked for a ship to go to the nearest star, a rocket, naturally. Even allowing for a better design than we now have the journey will take a long time--forty or fifty years going and the same time back. That's entirely too long for a normal crew, but it wouldn't matter to us. You know what the Medicouncil did with that request. That's why we're here." "Why rockets?" interrupted Jordan. "Why not some form of that gravity drive you were talking about? Seems to me for travel over a long distance it would be much better." "As an idea it's very good," said Docchi. "Theoretically there's no upper limit to the gravity drive except the velocity of light and even that's questionable. If it would work the time element could be cut in fractions. But the last twenty years have proved that gravity drives don't work at all outside the solar system. They work very well close to the sun, start acting up at the orbit of Venus and are no good at all from Earth on out." "Why don't they?" asked Jordan. "You said they used the same generator as passenger gravity. Those work away from the sun." "Sure they do," said Docchi impatiently. "Like ours is working now? Actually ship internal gravity is more erratic than we had on the asteroid, and that's hardly reliable. For some reason the drive is always worse than passenger gravity. Don't ask me why. If I knew I wouldn't be on Handicap Haven. Arms or no arms, biocompensator or not, I'd be the most important scientist on Earth." "With multitudes of women competing for your affections," said Anti. "I think he'd settle for one," suggested Jordan. "Poor unimaginative man," said Anti. "When I was young I was not so narrow in my outlook."